Casa Youth Shelter

Casa Youth Shelter serves and nurtures youth in crisis with shelter, counseling, and support services, empowering them to come through their crisis with increased confidence, stability, and tools for continued growth. We envision a community where all adolescents in crisis have a safe place to stay, in an environment that promotes personal growth and healthy relationships. Our primary objective is to prevent and end youth homelessness for youth in crisis.

Our services focus on preventing and ending youth homelessness in two ways: first, we stop the immediate emergency of homelessness by giving them safe and stable shelter, along with food, comfort, and counseling to develop their well-being and coping skills. We provide tutoring, social and emotional support through therapy, and positive youth development through our staff and volunteers. Second, we connect them with long-term services that we do not directly provide so they may continue to develop their social and emotional well-being, permanent connections, education/employment, and secure housing when they are no longer with us.

Fundamentally, our work reflects the values and priority we place on individuals, teamwork, personal development, family, and the strength found in community. Our adult and teen volunteers, Board of Directors, and staff understand the youth and families that seek our help are not defined by their situation; rather, we believe that everyone deserves and has a right to be treated with dignity and respect.

Since our founding in 1978, Casa Youth Shelter has been committed to helping youth and families address their concerns, through shelter, and with counseling, outreach, and case management services. Our highly-trained staff of 44 (9 full-time, 34 part-time), and 55 volunteers are deeply dedicated to providing a safe, warm, home-like environment for our youth around the clock.

As the only 24/7 full-service youth-specific emergency shelter between Huntington Beach and Culver City open to the public, we provide 12 licensed beds, a counseling center, recreation room, giving library, and computer lab. We have a strong reputation and have cultivated relationships with community partners that speak to our long-term strength. Our committed 22-member Board of Directors represents a wide variety of business and community interests; many have been involved in CYS for decades because the impact of our work has continued to inspire their advocacy.

The long term, intended outcomes for Casa Youth Shelter's Residential Shelter Care program are for residents to develop permanent connections, display self-sufficiency, feel a sense of well-being and live in an environment of safety.

In 2019, Casa Youth Shelter provided 2,351 shelter days and 5,901 hours of combined counseling and education services to 241 residents. As a result of those counseling hours, 80% successfully exited to safe and stable housing. Furthermore, 81% of residents and their families took part in aftercare counseling. Further, 91% of our 241 residents reported an exit disposition of "Satisfactory or Successful", meaning they exited our shelter out of crisis and meeting many if not all of their individualized treatment plan goals. A combined total of 13,552 community outreach hours were spent providing youth education, public awareness, parent education and basic needs services.

In the last few years, we have seen an increase in crisis calls to our shelter from youth and/or families who are in crisis but cannot or will not enter our Residential Shelter Program. The ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have only further exacerbated the social, emotional and behavioral health-related needs and every-day challenges faced by at-risk youth in crisis and in danger of homelessness.

In October 2021, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Children’s Hospital Association joined to declare “a national emergency” in youth mental health. Furthermore, in December 2021, the US Surgeon General issued a report warning that youth are facing devastating mental health effects, including significant increases of self-report of depression, anxiety, and emergency room visits for mental health challenges. Emergency room visits for suicide attempts rose 51 percent for adolescent girls in early 2021 as compared to the same period in 2019. The figure rose 4 percent for boys.

In response to the pandemic as well as the urgent need for youth-focused mental health care, CYS has extended counseling and case management services to youth and families outside of our residential program, and we will continue to provide these services throughout the pandemic and beyond. In the last year, we were able to serve an additional 57 youth and their families who were not utilizing our shelter program.